ANALYSIS: "Vietnam progresses economically but backwards democratically"

In just ten years, the street scene has totally changed in the capital Hanoi. New luxury hotels are pushing up a bit everywhere and property prices are rising. Formerly cycled in Vietnam, today almost all electric scooters or cars. The intensity of commercial street life shows that business is going well. The whole of Vietnam's economy is booming.

The country is now joining the ranks of Asian countries that have undergone strong economic development and modernization. At the same time, Vietnam is falling far down on lists of freedom of expression and democratic development.

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, after 20 years of fighting, the country was one of the world's poorest countries with an infrastructure in disrepair. In the mid-1980s, the regime broke with the socialist planning economy and implemented economic reforms, called Doi Moi, to increase productivity.

Agriculture is currently run as a family business, albeit on state-owned land. Deregulation has made it easier for foreign companies to invest in the country and investments have been made in training the labor force.

Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization, as well as ASEAN, a cooperative organization for countries in Southeast Asia. The country has also entered into a series of trade agreements with, among other things, the US and recently with the EU.

Thanks to this, the country has gone from poverty to relative prosperity and growth is today at 6-7 percent, in line with neighboring China.

Over the past two years, the economy has been given an extra push by the China-US trade war. More and more companies are moving their production here, among these Swedish glove manufacturer Hestra, which, like a number of companies with extensive exports to the US, was hit hard by the newly introduced trade duties.

At the same time as Vietnam's economy is growing, the control of its citizens is stiff. The one-party Communist Party does not allow any other political parties. Neither does critical review. The journalist organization "Reporters Without Borders" ranks the country in place 175 out of 180 in its press freedom index, on a par with North Korea and China.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report that journalists are being beaten by police and imprisoned. The Internet is also monitored and authorities are shutting down obnoxious websites.

Vietnam is thus another example of an Asian as a country moving forward economically but backward democratically; yet another case that contradicts the old Western hope that market economy reform and material prosperity automatically lead to the citizens' increased freedom and rights in a parliamentary democracy.